Sara knew that the water from the bathtub faucet contained the atoms of all the dinosaurs that had ever lived. When she sat in the tub and closed her eyes to keep the soap out, she grew terrified by the roaring they made, the frustrated rage pouring from their throats, buried in the sound of the thundering water so that she could scarcely hear it. As Aunt Madge pulled her toward the tub, she jerked away from her grip. "No!" she sobbed. "I don’t want a bath."

"Come here, you brat," panted Madge. She grabbed for Sara, but she ducked under her arm and ran into the kitchen.

Madge pursued her, ponderous steps shaking the floor. Her shapeless housedress, printed with violent blood-red and jungle green blooms, billowed about her, but she was not as fearsome as the dinosaurs, with their cruel teeth and earth-shaking tread, that waited just under the surface of the bathtub water.

Sara sped through the kitchen where breakfast dishes crusted with dried egg and scraps of toast littered the table. She ran through the living room where the dark green chairs crouched under their drifts of newspapers, and up the stairs. Breathless, she reached the room that she shared with Liz and Ellen. They were at school in the daytime, leaving her alone to take the brunt of Madge’s fitful rages.

The stairs creaked under her aunt’s footsteps. Sara cowered in the corner behind the door, afraid of the dinosaurs, afraid of the hours that lay in wait, like vicious gray dogs, until her sisters came home from school. She knew the dinosaurs were all gone, that the earth no longer shuddered under their weight, but she knew that would not stop them from surrounding her in the bathtub. She had heard a man on TV say that all the atoms of the creatures that had ever lived still floated around in the world, so that a dinosaur’s eye might be part of your knee. But she knew the dinosaurs were in the water; she had heard their muted bellowing, their ancient threatening voices.

She squeezed her eyes shut as Madge came into the room. A hand gripped her arm and lifted her. "No more of that, Miss Smartmouth. Get downstairs into that tub."

"I don’t want to, Aunt Madge," she whimpered as she followed the flapping housedress out of the room. "I don’t want to get eaten."

"Nothing’s going to eat you. Where’d you get that stupid idea?" said Madge.

Sara shook her head. She wasn’t going to say anything about the dinosaurs. She pulled the collar of her nightgown to her mouth and began to chew on it.

"Stop that! It’s a filthy habit." Madge slapped her hand away.

Her heart sank as she was pulled through the living room. The last time she had had a bath it was with Lizzy, and that wasn’t so bad. The dinosaurs kept quiet when someone else was there. But if she were alone in the tub, she didn’t know what they might do.

As Madge pulled her into the bathroom she had a sudden splendid vision: one of the dinosaurs, one of the big meat-eating ones, might take shape again, rising out of the bathwater with his long neck and powerful jaws, and his eyes would dart around the room and light on the juiciest person there. The neck would arch down, the jaws open wide and snap shut, and no Aunt Madge would remain to trouble her. But it would not happen.

Madge shook her until her teeth chattered. "No more whining. Get in that tub and scrub yourself." She bent down and turned on the water once more.

"No!" Sara pulled away, tears in her eyes, terrified by the sudden roar from the faucet. "Don’t! You’ll hurt me like you did Andy."

Madge loomed over her, suddenly ferocious. "You hush about that. That was an accident! It’s bad enough I get saddled with you kids, without getting blamed for every accident you get yourselves into."

"He was only three." Sara’s anger blazed suddenly. "You’re supposed to watch little kids."

Madge’s eyes grew cold. "It’s not my fault he fell down the stairs. Don’t ever say a word about that again." She slapped her suddenly, hard, so that her head bounced off the tiled wall. It hurt too much to cry; she gasped and slid to the floor. Then her head started to pound, and she drew a long wailing breath.

Madge jerked her to her feet. "Stop that screeching, or I’ll give you something to cry about." She pulled the nightgown off over her head and plunked her into the tub. Dazed, she sank down, waist deep in the lukewarm water.

"Wash your hair!" Madge ordered, and stamped out of the room.

The side of Sara’s head throbbed. She stared fascinated at the water frothing into the tub, hiding the dinosaurs that floated around her. A drop of blood fell from her nose, dissolving to a smudgy pink fog. She closed her eyes and put her face in the water, letting her hair float, and heard the roaring of the dinosaurs, but it was muted, as if it came from a distance. It was not fierce any longer. Their voices were kind, sorrowful, mourning the lost world they had known, the blazing sunlight, the pristine swampland now gone forever; and mourning with her the world she had lost, the sunny garden, the warm embraces vanished as surely as the dinosaurs’ world.

She felt herself dissolving, melting like the dinosaurs, and with the last of her strength reached out and opened the drain. Her atoms mingling with the dinosaurs’, she went spinning and whirling away down the drain, down through the dark pipes and passages under the land, out to the mighty river in the company of the extinct, vast, terrible reptiles, roaring and laughing as they sped to the sea; and she laughed with them as she ran away to freedom.  

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Victoria Randall is a Northwest writer living in Seattle. She is the fantasy columnist for Alienskinmag, and the author of The Ring of the Dark Elves, the story of Norse hero Sigurd Fafnirsbane.
Website: www.talesoffantasy.com  

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